Your mind, quick as any computer, is now traveling to Egypt and calculating on the contents of the memory banks of Denial.

Chinga is perfectly real, penis-breath. As real as Shane! As real as Chongo!! As real as Shatman!! As real as Shane's brother!! As real as the Authorial Hamster Corridus!! As real as Rapaire!!

And besides, just because a gal is a little liberal with her favors and lives life on the scandalous side is not any reason to go calling her unreal. That's very judgemental of you, LIttle Hawk, really.

Step one of my final day of picking grapes has been completed: I took a pruning shear over to my tree with grape vines and I cut out as many of the spreading poison ivy tendrils as I could. I had my rake and I moved them all off to the side. Then after 15 minutes or so I came home to take a paper towel with rubbing alcohol and swabbed off my hands and legs then my rake and pruner. Trying to put that pesky poison ivy oil out of commission.

Next, I'll take a tarp and the long handled pruner and see if I can't get another quart or so of grapes, to top off my batch I've been juicing this week. Third time's the charm. I'm going to teach my 16-year-old son to make jelly later this week. He eats enough of it, he might was well know how to make it! (He also helped pick most of the grapes yesterday, despite his protests that he'd rather be doing something else).

By the way, if you want to get rid of that poison ivy patch for certain sure, just hire Rapaire to do the job. A little excavation, a little plastic explosive, some wires, a detonator....

It'll all be taken care of in one glorious moment, and your whole community will take note. In fact, I would consider selling tickets in advance of the event. A lot of people (mostly males) really like seeing things like that, and you are in Texas, right?

Well in that case. . . but you'd better bring a cooler for your beer, that is, if you're planning to make an evening of the event. The creek next to the grape and poison ivy tree is probably 90 degrees by now.

The red wine creepeth as evening under my poor senses, And brings on an eventide of the spirit; so Are the posts of the Mother delayed, slowed and dulled, Until another sun showeth their truer lights abroad.

Oh fer...look. A bit of powdered magnesium, some powdered aluminum, a touch of potassium perchlorate, maybe some strontium nitrate for a lovely red color, sprinkle liberally on the poison ivy, drop a lit match.... But do it when the wind is blowing away from your house since the smoke for poison ivy carries the irritant. Don't make your house unlivable -- annoy the neighbors.

I prefer the lovely red color to come from the grapes. This batch (next to the beer purely for scientific reasons--perspective, you know) hadn't been filtered yet. It was made into jelly last week over at a friend's house. I have another smaller batch of juice in there now so I can show my son how jelly is made.

The Old School, then, I would have to guess, subscribes to the categorical imperative that ideals must be based on force. ANd I thought PLato was old!! His school is 20th century compared to the neanderthal version.

Haven't you always wanted to be a mustachioed British gent clad in an expensive smoking jacket and wearing a monocle, who opens his study doors only to find several complete strangers of both genders entangled in a mass of nude and palpitating bodies on his priceless Persian rug, clearly engaged in what is politely referred to as "group coition"...upon which said gent's jaw drops to the floor in utter gobsmacked outrage, and he utters these undying words:

"WHAT...IS....THE MEANING OF THIS????!!"

I know I have. ;-D

I love those sort of scenes. The confrontation of stuffy old class and tradition with total, absolute license and depravity.

The boy considered for a moment. 'You would have to talk to Pa about that' he finally conceded. 'If it helps you any, I know that Pa charges $500 for the bull and $50 for the hog, but I really don't know how much he gets fer Howard.'